49 bowman mystery remains unsolved

[oaks1912]

Originally Posted by sflayank

Most think the pcl didnt even come in packs
Sheets of 36 that were cut up
So the mystery remains

Ted Zanidakis and I collaborated on an article nearly 30 years ago which addresses some of these questions. You can find it in VCBC, issue #10 from March 1997

[ALR-bishop]

I certainly can not say how the PCL cards were circulated but can say it was a very hard set to complete.

I do keep a copy of Ted and Mark's article with my 49 Bowman sets, and a subsequent SABR article by Tim Jenkins

[oaks1912]

For Al and others who may have interest.....

Since the VCBC article was published in 1997, a few notes can be added which were not included in Tim Jenkins piece published in 2020. First off , there have been several small 'finds' of "outside the hobby" 1949 Bowman PCL cards, all of which turned up in the metro Seattle area as well as northern Oregon. This will add slightly to the overall population. However it is possible with the plethora of large scale fires and flooding in the Western U.S. that some 'documented' cards could actually have been destroyed.

My source for the uncut sheet find was the late Walt Gerson, from Salem, Oregon. Walt was a longtime paper ephemera dealer that stumbled across a group of '49 Bowman PCL cards locally. This find included a 'few' uncut sheets. Walt set up at the 1987 National in San Francisco, where he sold the sheets.

In mid 2020 I started to piece out the estate of a long time Bay Area collector (and friend) who had recently passed away, a process which took 15 months. Included in this collection was a full set of 36 uncirculated 1949 Bowman PCL cards. They were all the exact same size, but had been cut down by a higher quality process making them appear as Mint as a brand new product. The edges were sharper than any original "pack circulated" '49 Bowmans that exist. Included with this set was the documentation of where it was acquired in the early 1990's. I contacted that seller & he does not recall the specifics of transacting that set (from 30 years earlier), nor it's origin. We both felt it was one of those sheets from the '87 find that had been professionally cut down, somewhere between 1987 and 1991. This magnificent set was sold to an advanced collector, along with the history that was known about this group. I believe that this collector still owns the set.

The purpose of the 'second' '49 Bowman wrapper is still only speculation. The only collector that I ever encountered from the Pacific Northwest who not only bought them out of packs in 1949 (Greenlake district in Seattle) AND was in the hobby continuously (until his death) was the late Frank Caruso. Frank was a longtime friend and his recall was almost as good as Ted Zanidakis' , especially when I talked with him about the Bowman PCL series in the 90's. Anything short of an unopened box find from a pedigreed Northwest general store that went out of business in the summer of '49 would continue the speculation.

[toppcat]

There is some background on the 49 Bowman Packs here:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...d-pack-breaks/

[ALR-bishop]

Thaks for posting Dave

[drcy]

As a limerick:

A pack of orange-green cards was seen,
A second pack, red-white-blue sheen.
Two boxes, they made,
In different shades,
Why so? Well, that's still unforeseen!

[Webster]

That’s a nice SCD write-up. Unfortunately, it incorrectly states that all of the 1949 Bowmans were from the second series. Using Ted Z’s nomenclature, the cards from the Orange/green Pack were series 2, 3, and 4. The Red/white/blue contained series 3 and 4.